frank Coughlin

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Aftershocks

It is never enough to be rocked
so hard the ground beneath you seems unstable
like standing on a funhouse floor at the carnival
Your life feels all out of place, around you
everything has been shifted into an uncomfortable change
The porcelain elephants you so meticulously collected
from seventeen different countries and thirteen states
have jumped from their perch on the southeast wall
the place where they could be seen the easiest and best
Seven of them did not survive. They cannot be replaced -
as there is no going back in time (not yet anyway) .
It is like this in every room of which I have called my home.
The feeling of surety has been shaken loose
as if it were only something I had tacked on to cover up
reality. Is there a point to putting back everything to
the way it was? The elephants are my answer, I re-place them again
in their special nook and I wait.
For the earth's answer - which I know will come.

©Frank Coughlin May 2011

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